The upper parts are mostly blackish apart from a broad collar of orange fur and sometimes a dark brown or yellowish-brown lower body.

[1] A colony of thousands of bats consisting of this species, mixed with the large flying fox, is to be found at the Bat Pagoda (Khmer Chùa Dơi) in Sóc Trăng city in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam.

[4] Like other flying foxes, Lyle's flying fox feeds on fruit; its diet is known to include mango, cashew, monkey jack, sapodilla, dragonfruit, Java apple, tamarind, jambolan and roseapple.

[3] This bat is a reservoir for the Nipah virus, the causal agent of a newly emerged neurological and respiratory disease which was first reported in 1998.

Another threat the bats face is hunting in Thailand and Cambodia and persecution by farmers across their range trying to protect their orchards.